The Weinstein Companyhttp://weinsteinco.com
Fri, 24 Jul 2015 18:38:25 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Deadline: Quentin Tarantino Q&A For ‘The Hateful Eight’ At Comic Conhttp://weinsteinco.com/uncategorized/deadline-quentin-tarantino-qa-for-the-hateful-eight-at-comic-con/
http://weinsteinco.com/uncategorized/deadline-quentin-tarantino-qa-for-the-hateful-eight-at-comic-con/#commentsFri, 17 Jul 2015 15:42:13 +0000http://weinsteinco.com/?p=9108READ MORE]]>EXCLUSIVE: In between all the superhero spectacles today at San Diego Comic Con, Quentin Tarantino and his The Hateful Eight cast barnstormed into Hall H to show seven minutes of throwback filmmaking, harkening back to the way moviegoers saw films. It’s 70mm and the story is post-Civil War, where everybody had reason to be pissed at something, and it’s inevitable the fuse of a powderkeg will be lit when eight ornery characters on either side of the law are forced to huddle in a haberdashery when snowed in by a deadly storm. Right before Tarantino took the stage with cast members Bruce Dern, Walton Goggins, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Demian Bichir and Kurt Russell (Samuel L. Jackson couldn’t make it), Tarantino sat with Deadline for a quick chat.

This publication played a minor role in the prologue of The Hateful Eight when we broke news that Tarantino had abruptly decided to shelve the picture after giving the first draft script to a small group of actors, and discovering the agent of at least one of them copied it and dispersed it all over town. And soon enough, websites like Gawker were pointing their readers to anonymous website that carried the script in full. I have written about Tarantino a long time, and it isn’t often that one gets a fat story like this dropped in their lap by a world famous film director, and then spends the next five minutes trying to calm him down and talk him out of scrapping a project I just really wanted to see. We start there.

TARANTINO: This does feel like we’ve come full circle, after that first conversation when I was so angry.

DEADLINE: And what does it say about me as a journalist that I spent five minutes trying to talk you out of it?

TARANTINO: My first thought was, here I was all livid and mad, and I give you a scoop of all time, and you are like, ‘No, no, you have to make this movie.’

DEADLINE: Okay then, it’s official. Worst journalist ever.

TARANTINO: It was really lovely, actually, one of the sweeter moments I’ve had with a journalist, and showed me that you actually cared about me. As mad as I was, it made me stop and think, did I really want to do this…

DEADLINE: In my defense, I wanted to be sure that you were sure, and not just pissed off. Once it was out, you can’t take it back. It nearly crashed our site. So your script leaked, and you shelved it. Then you arranged a star-studded reading for a charity, changed your mind, then made it a poster child for the preservation of film stock and had Harvey Weinstein round up every 70mm projector so at least some of the audience would see the movie the way they used to play. How did all of this change the original intention you had when you wrote the script, thinking it was just going to be your next movie?

TARANTINO: Sitting here in July, that seems like a million years ago. It affected my process, in so far as, this was one script I wanted to differently from the way I’d done it before. Normally, I proudly finish a first draft and I don’t write First Draft on it, I write, Last Draft. Then I’m done and boom. I wanted to do three drafts of this one, before I let it out into the world. This was just the first draft. There were multiple plot threads I knew I needed to tie up, but I didn’t even bother in Draft One because I knew I’d get there by Draft Three. When the script got out there, it violated this process in my mind of how I was going to do it, that was why I reacted so strongly. It felt like a betrayal, a violation, and I felt like, oh man, you’re in particular f*cking me up in this scenario. That’s why I reacted so badly. But then after I reacted that way, I just kept doing what I was doing. By the time we did that script reading, I had worked on it a bit and it was like a second draft. I’d worked on it a little and already had a different Chapter 5, though I didn’t end up doing that one either.

DEADLINE: That was the final act of the film?

TARANTINO: The movie is broken down into five chapters and Chapter 5 is the end. That was all very disconcerting, but at the same time, I’d never really rehearsed a script before I had done the movie, not in that earliest stage. We rehearsed for that public script reading for three days, so we got a lot done then. Then we did the reading and not only was it a smash, I got great reviews for it. I had never gotten great reviews before for a script, before I made the movie. That couldn’t help but be encouraging. Seeing the actors doing it was also encouraging. From that point on, it flowed into its own thing. It might have been disconcerting making such a big deal about 70mm, and making such a big deal about the road show and how we will be presenting it in 70mm in maybe 100 cities. All that was all made easier in that I had grown so confident in the material itself.

DEADLINE: It was like you’d have your out-of-town workshop before bringing the play to Broadway.

TARANTINO: Yes. To have made such a big presentation before I had gone and made the movie would literally have been putting the cart before the horse, if I wasn’t happy enough with the material, if there was still a question to decide if I could pull this off, we wouldn’t be talking about this stuff this way, it would be more like, hey, let’s try to do it this way. I felt confident about the material, the actors, and I guess myself, that we’d be okay.

DEADLINE: You have another killer cast. The inspiration for the material was all those TV Western series you watched as a kid. What did it mean to have Bruce Dern playing that ornery guy who used to hassle young Bruce Dern when he starred in all those shows?

TARANTINO: It was so interesting. Walt Goggins’ character is the character Bruce Dern would have played, if we’d done this in 1969. Walt Goggins has the Bruce Dern role. A lot of Bruce’s scenes are with Walt and it was wonderful to see these two different archetypes playing off each other. The jumping off point was those episodic Western TV shows, and in the case of both Bruce Dern and Kurt Russell, they were on those shows. Forget about Bruce, he did seven Gunsmokes, and five Big Valleys; Kurt did a High Chaparral, and Kurt did a Gunsmoke. He had his own Western show, The Quest, and The Trials Of Jamie McPeters. He was on all those shows, and so they got the references. I would always talk about, if I was doing this movie in 1969, what would be the cast, with those type of actors? Bruce Dern would be playing the Chris Mannix role [Goggins played him], Vic Morrow would be there, Claude Akins would be the John Ruth role [Russell plays him], I would have cast Bill Cosby to be the Major Warren role [Samuel L. Jackson plays him].

DEADLINE: You worked with actors you’ve done repeat business with in Jackson, Russell, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen, but you’ve added new actors in Goggins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Demian Bichir. Who most surprised you?

TARANTINO: No contest. It would have to be Jennifer who wins most surprising. Though the way Demian played Bob the Mexican, is so different from how I conceived it. That is the “who the f*ck is this guy” performance. In the case of Sam, Walt, Kurt, Tim and Michael Madsen, I was writing for those guys, and they fit the characters and the rhythms of the dialogue, like a glove. They took it to higher heights than it was on the page, but that was more or less what I expected. Part of the thing about Daisy Domergue is, that character had to be discovered and fleshed out by the actress. Maybe 15 actresses could have played what I wrote on the page. And you would have 15 characterizations. You couldn’t show it in the audition, somebody had to commit to being that character and see where that leads you. She’s such a weird hot potato of a character. I needed Daisy to be revealed to me, and that would never happen beforehand. So I had to choose right and see what kind of flower bloomed. And she bloomed into this truly amazing character, one of my favorite female characters I’ve ever written. She is a force to be reckoned with, but I don’t think she would have been able to conceive it, and I wouldn’t either, it was one of those things where you had to commit and see where it went.

DEADLINE: The script called for a suffocating amount of snow that forces these hateful eight into one room. We kept hearing that both you, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu on The Revenant, had some challenges finding the snow. How was that?

TARANTINO: People have made too much of that. He had a far tougher problem than I did with the snow. We didn’t get snow the first month we were there, but then we got a sh*t load of it, after that. The only thing it did was kept us up there longer, but frankly that made the movie cooler and better than if we just got what we needed and headed for a sound stage. We shot the whole first half of the movie, that was done in Colorado. We got our snow for that. We just had to wait longer than we expected. When it came, it really came and it just looks amazing in the movie. From what I’ve heard, I don’t know if they ever truly got what they needed.

DEADLINE: You said you were shooting the biggest widescreen movie in 40 years and you were going to remind people why this is real moviemaking. Coming out the other side, what are some things that make you feel you were right to stand your ground, dig your heels in and do it this way?

TARANTINO: The proof will be in the pudding, in the look and the feel of the film, but it was just gratifying shooting and then watching our dailies in 70mm, at the end of every day. You just looked at it and said, there it is, baby, it’s right there. Even as far as editing, I am trying not to get comfortable watching on the Avid. Every time we finished a scene, they conformed the film and we’d go to the Directors Guild and screen what we’d just done. So I am used to seeing it big, the way it is going to be seen. But the proof is also how excited everybody seems to be about the idea of this roadshow, the 70mm presentation. Even the foreign distributors, who are figuring out how they can best show the movie. Part of the thought process at the very beginning was, if I shoot on the 65mm, then I’m making them release it on 70mm. They weren’t spending all that money to just have a [token effort]. So that was forcing their hand. Well, little did I realize that, while 35mm presentation might be a lost cause, 70mm isn’t. That could be the future, as far as how a big special movie is showcased.

I hadn’t realized what a lost cause 35mm has proven to be, and how excited about 70mm that people in the industry were going to get. We used those Ultra Panavision 70 lenses, and now, Star Wars is doing the next movie with those lenses. And that means they are going to release it big in 70mm for some big thing. I never thought I would be in a world where my movie is leading Star Wars, when it comes to technical equipment. All the studios, because Harvey has all these projectors now, they are saying, maybe we’d like to that on some of our movies. We are hearing that the entire industry is saying, let’s just see how this roadshow does, let’s just see. It might not work, but it could be a real thing. It’s going to be about 100 stops on the roadshow. They promised me 80 to 100 screens, and I think we’ve just gotten up to 100 as of last week. That more or less breaks down to the idea that every state in America has at least two venues.

DEADLINE: So you start out making another film, and you strike a blow for preserving film, and another for the sanctity of a copyrighted creation of a screenplay?

TARANTINO: I have to say I regret the lawsuit with Gawker. Not because I’m friendly with those fellas. I think they’re scumbags, frankly. But it confused the issue. And that issue was about those agents passing my script around, and the lack of accountability that is involved in Hollywood. Once I screamed and yelled about it, it might have made people say, well, maybe that is wrong, and I have done that. They have bragged about it, had they done it the week before, but that week, they were a bit shy about it. By throwing the light on Gawker, it took the light off what was important to me, which was business practices in this town.

Maureen’s spoiler-y fate is revealed in the trailers for the movie, which is due out July 24, but the interview lends great insight into the character and McAdams’s process. To prepare for the role, McAdams — who can currently be seen as the world-weary detective Ani Bezzerides on True Detective — researched interviews with boxer’s wives. “I did a little bit of boxing with his coach, Terry Claybon, who’s amazing, just to get a sense of what it is,” McAdams explains. “Just to understand it better.”

But director Antoine Fuqua also threw McAdams some curveballs, including a surprise kiss on her first day from Gyllenhaal, who plays Billy Hope. “I literally told Billy just go grab her, pull her up on the ring and just start kissing her, and she went right there with him,” Fuqua says.

The Harvey Weinstein-produced musical adaptation of “Finding Neverland” took flight in its first Broadway preview last week, selling out the house and posting the kind of box office that, if it continued for a whole week of performances, would have seen the show top $1 million.

The single performance of “Finding Neverland” (pictured above in its tryout run at the A.R.T. in Cambridge, Mass.) hit $159,823, drawing a packed house of 1,510 theatergoers. The average ticket price came in at $105.84, a pretty robust figure for a show during previews, a period during which pre-opening tickets are often sold at reduced prices to get audiences in the door.

It’s a promising showing for the title, which stars Matthew Morrison (“Glee”) and Kelsey Grammer in the backstory of J.M. Barrie’s creation of Peter Pan. But the big numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, in that the figures for first previews often get a boost from curious Broadway avids and rabid fans of stars or titles. Besides, initial interest in “Neverland” was bound to be high since Weinstein began drumming up New York publicity for it way back when he got a song from the show on the 2014 Tony telecast. Whether the audience enthusiasm will continue to hold up in the coming weeks remains to be seen.

Also debuting well were “The King and I” ($420,879 for four previews) and “An American in Paris” ($317,918 for two previews). “The King and I” played to full capacity, and its box office tally looks particularly strong for a nonprofit production (from Lincoln Center Theater) at which total box office is bound to be reduced by the lower-priced tickets available to LCT members. Meanwhile, “American in Paris” came close to selling out, and can attract attention with a familiar title, a score of well-known Gershwin tunes and a dance-centric staging that matches consumer expectations of a title so closely associated with original star Gene Kelly.

Meanwhile, the first shows for Carey Mulligan-Bill Nighy starrer “Skylight” ($253,369 for three previews) performed solidly, grossing 83% of its box office capacity and playing to full houses. Having a tougher go of it, predictably, was “Hand to God” ($36,122 for one), which, with an unfamiliar title and no stars in the cast, will likely prove a challenge to sell at least until critics (who loved the show when it played Off Broadway) weigh in next month.

Not only did a whopping five shows arrive on Broadway last week, but tourists did, too, as spring-break business helped propel sales overall to $23 million for 30 shows now running. Attendance jumped to 224,793, filling 88% of the Main Stem’s total seats.

Nearly every single individual show stepped up, with many of the biggest gains posted at the usual suspects of top visitor attractions like “The Lion King” ($1,824,627) and “Wicked” ($1,818,766) as well as “Matilda” ($949,057) and “The Phantom of the Opera” ($847,147).

One of the biggest jumps of the week came at Larry David comedy “Fish in the Dark” ($1,223,970, a new house record), riding David’s fanbase all the way up to the fifth slot on the week’s top 10. Right behind it on the chart was “The Audience” ($1,085,327), drawing crowds with Helen Mirren’s return to the role of the Queen of England. Another star-driven play, Jake Gyllenhaal-Ruth Wilson outing “Constellations” ($704,605 for nine), played its final week and posted the highest sales of its entire run.

Among those titles struggling for purchase in the increasingly crowded field, “Honeymoon in Vegas” ($410,732) climbed by more than a third compared to the prior week, while Elisabeth Moss starrer “The Heidi Chronicles” ($321,977) remained steady in a week that accommodated some critics performances. (The show opens Thursday.)

The spring season and the city visitors it brings should continue to keep Broadway healthy next week, too, when the slate will gain further entrants “It Should Been You” (starting previews March 17), “Gigi” (March 19) and “Wolf Hall” (March 20).

]]>http://weinsteinco.com/news/variety-gordon-cox-broadway-box-office-finding-neverland-soars-in-first-preview/feed/0Deadline: Walter Isaacson On The Value Of ‘The Imitation Game’http://weinsteinco.com/news/deadline-walter-isaacson-on-the-value-of-the-imitation-game/
http://weinsteinco.com/news/deadline-walter-isaacson-on-the-value-of-the-imitation-game/#commentsThu, 12 Feb 2015 22:27:05 +0000http://weinsteinco.com/?p=8979READ MORE]]>Walter Isaacson is the former chairman of CNN and onetime managing editor of Time magazine. He also is an author and knows a thing or two about game-changing subjects like The Imitation Game‘s Alan Turing, having penned the Steve Jobs biography that is becoming a movie written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle. Here he makes the case for Turing’s tale to win the Best Picture Oscar.

In addition to being a delightful movie, there were two particular insights inThe Imitation Game that I admired, which is why I hope it wins the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The movie — along with Benedict Cumberbatch’s sensitive portrayal of Alan Turing — reminds us of the value of collaboration when it comes to invention. Creativity is a team sport, and the movie shows that vividly.

Turing was very much a loner by nature. He was socially awkward and his preferred relaxation was solitary long-distance running. The fact that he was gay also made him feel apart, an outsider.

But there comes a time in his work trying to break the German wartime codes at Hut 8 in Bletchley Park, England, when he realizes he cannot succeed alone. He needs the support and collaboration of the others on the team. And he achieves that. It is an important lesson, for then and today, that innovation is not the sole purview of lone geniuses. It comes from creating great teams that can execute on a vision.

The movie’s other important insight is that it reminds us of how very human Alan Turing was — as are we all. His original concept of an “imitation game” is what we now call the Turing Test. He devised it as a way to show when the quest for “artificial intelligence” had succeeded and machines would be able to think in ways indistinguishable from humans.

He thought that would happen in a few decades. In fact, however, his own heroic and tragic life is a testament to the fact that for now — and perhaps way into the foreseeable future — there is something special about being human. The essence of human emotions, desires, free will, and consciousness cannot be easily replicated in a machine.

As the movie poignantly and sensitively shows, when Turing is arrested because of his homosexuality, he is treated as if he’s some sort of machine, a chemically based machine. He is sentenced to undergo hormone treatments to “reprogram” his desires.

For a while Turing takes that treatment in stride. But then, afterwards, he dips an apple into a solution of cyanide and bites into it.

Is that something a machine would have done? No. The imitation game was over and the conclusion was clear. Turing was a human, not a machine.

]]>http://weinsteinco.com/news/deadline-walter-isaacson-on-the-value-of-the-imitation-game/feed/0Huffington Post: ‘The Imitation Game’ Tells the Story of My Codebreaking Unclehttp://weinsteinco.com/news/huffington-post-the-imitation-game-tells-the-story-of-my-codebreaking-uncle/
http://weinsteinco.com/news/huffington-post-the-imitation-game-tells-the-story-of-my-codebreaking-uncle/#commentsThu, 12 Feb 2015 22:24:12 +0000http://weinsteinco.com/?p=8975READ MORE]]>I sadly never had the opportunity to meet my uncle, Alan Turing. We share some very basic similarities — we both attended Sherborne and King’s College, Cambridge, both have an affinity for mathematics, both have ties to Bletchley Park — but that’s about it. I couldn’t possibly claim to have achieved anything in the realm of what he did, but nevertheless I’ve always considered my relation to him a tremendous source of pride.

If we were to ignore his presence in our family background, we’d be turning our backs on a link to one of history’s truly great men. This was a man who was confident, and some might say eccentric, enough to put his name to a letter to Winston Churchill requesting his help in getting additional resources to his codebreaking team (Churchill answered swiftly and forcefully in Alan’s favor). It’s also been said that Churchill believed Alan Turing and the codebreakers of Bletchley should be credited with the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in the war against Nazi Germany.

Do a quick Google search into the public tributes that he’s received and you’ll find a wealth of reasons to think that my uncle has been remembered to the utmost extent; there are foundations, streets, awards, museum exhibitions, theatre productions, TV movies and countless books out there bearing his name.

The Imitation Game brings Alan to life in a rather different way — Benedict Cumberbatch and the team behind it managed not just to remind us about all his innovations and their magnitude; they also succeeded in making Alan a living, breathing, feeling human being who was complicated, strange, brilliant, caring and staunch in his belief that he would live life as he chose to. He was not afraid to challenge conventions, nor did he shy away from his identity as a homosexual.

The film paints a new picture of my uncle and, at times, it is a bit heart-wrenching. This is not, of course, to diminish the importance of talking about his genius or the fact that he spared countless lives with his work during the Second World War — and the film is sure to thank him for all of that.

There was time, not all that many years ago, when I’m fairly certain that no one who hadn’t been specifically schooled in computer science had ever heard of Alan. That began to change back in 2009, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued him a formal apology on behalf of the UK government for the treatment he endured before his death. It happened again four years later, when the UK Government secured a royal pardon for the same reasons.

These were opportunities not just to acknowledge the absurdity of Alan’s treatment for being a gay man but also the means of reviving the discussion around his vast accomplishments. The Imitation Game is a moving tribute and brings out a side of Alan Turing which doesn’t readily come across in a history book or an encyclopedia page.

Big Eyes is the story of a husband and a wife, and a defining moment in history where art and commercialism intersected for the first time. Before there was Warhol, there was Margaret and Walter Keane. Walter, a con artist, took credit for the true artist, Margaret’s work for years. As a maniacal salesman, he twisted the truth to serve his means, and invented the system of mass art reproduction. The frenzy surrounding the Big Eyes paintings marks the birth of the “pop art” movement, and eventually redefined what it means to be “kitsch.” The historic relevancy alone is enough to pique my interest, but I have a more personal connection to the paintings as well.

When I was a kid, the first piece of real artwork we ever had in our home was a “Big Eyes” print by Walter Keane – or so we thought. My Dad Max bought a Keane print at the corner store on 48th Street around the corner from his office in the diamond district. It was a seminal day for me and a seminal day for our family.

No one in our neighborhood had artwork hanging on their walls – family pictures, yes, but not art. We lived in a place called the Electchester in Queens, which was the next best thing to city housing. We loved our home just the same and with great pride my Dad framed this Walter Keane painting (as it was credited then) in our living room. That’s where it hung until years later when Margaret Keane won her court case, proving Walter was a fraud and that she was the painter behind all those big eyes pictures. My Dad had passed away when Margaret won the case against Walter. The painting that had once been a sense of pride now felt like a mockery. My Mom, in his honor, took the picture down, tore it up, threw it out. She felt she did it on his behalf. So when Tim Burton asked me why the hell I would finance Big Eyes, the answer is twofold. Number one: Tim Burton. Number two: my Dad.

I watched Tim direct this movie and create a color palate with his cinematographer, Bruno Delbonnel. I had no doubt when signing on for this film that Tim, and only Tim, could tell the Keanes’ story, but he exceeded even my expectations. To see how he dealt with the art world in such a satirical, questioning, ironic and openly liberating way was intoxicating. Even though I’ve had the pleasure of working with many great directors, watching Tim work on this film — a film about art — was incredible considering he’s a world-renowned artist himself.

And then we had the talents of Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz playing Margaret and Walter. It is shocking to me that Amy has not won an Academy Award yet and her skill, which is apparent in every role she has ever played, shines here. Amy became Margaret, and wholly inhabited the character with a quiet nuance brimmed with brilliance. Often it is the flamboyant roles that capture attention, but I have enough faith in the actors out there, that they understand the incredible skill it takes to capture a quiet performance. I’m betting on Amy.

When Christoph Waltz began his performance as Walter Keane, he had to be seductive at first to woo Amy Adams’ Margaret, but then become the over-the-top, maniacal, controlling husband halfway through. During his courtroom sequences, I remember Tim saying, “You have to take it down,” to which our writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski said, “But Walter Keane didn’t take it down.” According to reporters at the 1986 trial, the presiding judge, Judge Samuel King threatened to “take a recess and shackle [him] to a chair”, duct tape his mouth, and even went as far as “I’m going to beat you over the head with a mallet”, he was so outrageous. The judge even accused Walter of having a head full of cement. The things he did, based on the court transcripts, are beyond anything we could’ve put in the movie. Audiences would never believe it. You’re going see Christoph’s performance that you might think seems overstated, but in reality it’s understated. Walter was a con and a clown.

The thought then occurred to me: What if Walter isn’t the only one using this con game. Imagine that, say, Banksy, actually has a Mrs. Banksy locked in a room somewhere who was only allowed out at night, or if the elusive art was actually done by The Family Banksy, or if none of the work “he” claims to create is actually his own.

A number of years ago my friend and I bought a couple of Banksy pieces. Since I started making this movie, though, I’ve taken them down and locked in a safe. The reason is simple: I’ve never seen a picture of Banksy and I’ve never seen Banksy paint. Maybe there are seventeen Banksys. Maybe there’s no Banksy. Maybe Banksy is just a figment of my imagination (boy is this article going to cost me if that’s all true because the value of my own Banksy works are going to plummet).

So in light of this movie, I would like to offer the real Banksy to come out, come out wherever he or she is, and show the world what a fantastic painter he or she is out in the open. She / he / they can use the walls of my offices in Tribeca as the canvas. They’re perfectly suitable for spray paint. The actor who plays Judge King, James Saito, in Big Eyes is so great and learned so much on set that he can be the judge who Banksy paints for. And if there’s a Mrs. Banksy who has been the talent behind these paintings, I think it’s time to reveal her and give the credit deserved.

Big Eyes is a fun and human look at the art world and history. And it’s an opportunity for my dad, who’s in that big arm chair in the sky, to have the last laugh at the guy who took his hard-earned money under false pretenses. For me, it’ll give the world an opportunity for Banksy to read this article, fly to New York, and knock on our office door. We’ll have a canvas ready for him.

The Imitation Game, The Weinstein Co.’s film about British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, had a good week in the awards race, landing three SAG award nominations and five Golden Globes nominations.

Star Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the fascinating genius, received best actor nominations for both awards.

The Sherlock star is at the center of a new featurette for the film, debuting exclusively here at THR. The video explores why Cumberbatch was the right person to portray Turing, who was tasked with cracking Nazi Germany’s Enigma code during World War II.

“Benedict has such an intensity and such an intelligence,” says producer Ido Ostrowsky in the new video. “And he’s a very mysterious person himself.”

In THR‘s review of the film at Telluride, critic Todd McCarthy wrote: “Dominating it all is Cumberbatch, whose charisma — tellingly modulated — and naturalistic array of eccentricities, Sherlockian talent at indicating a mind never at rest, and knack for simultaneously portraying physical oddness and attractiveness combine to create an entirely credible portrait of genius at work.”

Cumberbatch’s co-star, Keira Knightley, who plays code-breaker Joan Clarke, also had kind words to share about the British actor. “He comes with a lot of ideas. He’s very alive and in the moment on set,” she said.

She added: “Benedict is very good at playing those geniuses, isn’t he?”

The Imitation Game, which first premiered at Telluride, began its rollout in U.S. theaters Nov. 28. Watch the exclusive video above.

]]>http://weinsteinco.com/uncategorized/imitation-game-featurette-cracks-the-code-of-benedict-cumberbatch/feed/0Rolling Stone: Bill Murray shines in this tale of an old coot who softens up..http://weinsteinco.com/news/rolling-stone-bill-murray-shines-in-this-tale-of-an-old-coot-who-softens-up-thanks-to-the-latchkey-kid-next-door/
http://weinsteinco.com/news/rolling-stone-bill-murray-shines-in-this-tale-of-an-old-coot-who-softens-up-thanks-to-the-latchkey-kid-next-door/#commentsWed, 29 Oct 2014 13:43:53 +0000http://weinsteinco.com/?p=8900READ MORE]]>Bill Murray shines in this tale of an old coot who softens up..BY Peter Travers | October 24, 2014

An aging, hard-drinking hardass gets reformed by the sweet innocence of the kid next door. I know, I wanted to gag too. But hold on. St. Vincent will dodge your impulse to projectile vomit. For that, all hail Bill Murray who whacks away at the script’s sentimental softballs like A-Rod in full swing. Murray plays Vincent McKenna, a Brooklyn drunk and Nam vet who likes living alone with his cat in a Sheepshead Bay house that gives “dump” a bad name. Vincent’s no loner. He hits the bar and the track and regularly boffs a pregnant Russian hooker named Daka (Naomi Watts salvaging a role conceived in cliché). Yup, Vincent can still get it up.

It’s too bad that first-time writer-director Theodore Melfi can’t or won’t side with the devil for long. The sinner must be redeemed. Enter the new neighbors. Maggie (Melissa McCarthy, wonderful) is a single mom on the run from an interfering ex and working as a CAT scan technician to support her 12-year-old son Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher). She pays Vincent to babysit because if she didn’t there’d be no movie. It’s a setup for schmaltz. But Melfi does solid work with a cast that comes up aces. McCarthy, playing her role straight and true, downplays the comedy to show surprising nuance and feeling. And Lieberher is a kid actor with none of the self-conscious, obnoxious traits of a kid actor. His scenes with Murray are hugely entertaining. Even when Melfi packs them on a bullet train to bathos, Murray busts through the rules of convention.

Is there an Oscar in his future? Fine by me. Big Bad Billy’s been robbed twice—for Rushmore and Lost in Translation. There’s nobody like Bill Murray. Never has been. Never will be. He’s indispensable. Stay in your seat for the end credits, in which Murray waters a dying plant and karaokes to Bob Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm.” That alone is worth double the price of admission.

]]>http://weinsteinco.com/news/rolling-stone-bill-murray-shines-in-this-tale-of-an-old-coot-who-softens-up-thanks-to-the-latchkey-kid-next-door/feed/0Yahoo! Movies: Feast Your Peepers on the Official Poster for ‘Big Eyes’http://weinsteinco.com/uncategorized/yahoo-movies-feast-your-peepers-on-the-official-poster-for-big-eyes/
http://weinsteinco.com/uncategorized/yahoo-movies-feast-your-peepers-on-the-official-poster-for-big-eyes/#commentsFri, 17 Oct 2014 19:07:18 +0000http://weinsteinco.com/?p=8887READ MORE]]>One of the obvious benefits to making a biopic about a famous painter: getting to use that artist’s work for your movie poster. There’s no mistaking the distinct creations of Margaret Keane, whose oil paintings are characterized by waifs with oversized, doughy-dark eyeballs. And, as you’d expect, one of her most famous portraits is front and center in the new poster for Big Eyes, which you can see exclusively above.

Early buzz around this drama, which focuses on the life of Keane (Amy Adams) and her husband, Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz), who for many years claimed credit for her work, is that it marks macabre master Tim Burton’s “most normal” or “least weird” film in years.

Of course, it’s still an artful tale, literally, and there’s no denying the eyes that dominate Keane’s work — in reality, on film, and on this poster — have a creepy tinge to their beauty.

]]>http://weinsteinco.com/uncategorized/yahoo-movies-feast-your-peepers-on-the-official-poster-for-big-eyes/feed/0PopSugar: Bill Murray Could Not Be Cooler in a New St. Vincent Posterhttp://weinsteinco.com/uncategorized/popsugar-bill-murray-could-not-be-cooler-in-a-new-st-vincent-poster/
http://weinsteinco.com/uncategorized/popsugar-bill-murray-could-not-be-cooler-in-a-new-st-vincent-poster/#commentsTue, 14 Oct 2014 19:47:34 +0000http://weinsteinco.com/?p=8860READ MORE]]>We’re already excited for Bill Murray‘s new comedy, St. Vincent, and this exclusive new poster encapsulates everything potentially great about it. Noami Watts is looking out of her element behind the wheel, Murray is just cruisin’ with some elderly person glasses on, and Melissa McCarthy is running with a panicked look on her face. This can only mean amazing things are ahead. We’ve already watched the scene where Murray sings a Bob Dylan tuneseveral times, but if you haven’t already, you should definitely check it out. The movie is out in limited release on Oct. 17 and will be in wide release on Oct. 24!